The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Loading ...

Loading ...

This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe

Continued from page 2

Rick's most frequent claim was that there was, and could not possibly be any Plan B; that if we voted down this tax hike, no new stadiums could be constructed and the Pirates and the Steelers would leave Pittsburgh. I remember one particular televised debate on a show which I hosted, called Pennsylvania Newsmakers, in which Santorum wagged his finger in my face and shouted that he had looked into the matter and that I should look into the matter and that if we voted this down, we would lose the franchises. Now much of the U.S. is familiar with the famous Santorum finger wagging bravado, but it took me by surprise that a man who claimed to be some kind of principled conservative had suddenly become a champion of a Keynesian tax hike government stimulus program, and was angry at me for not joining him.

Well, when the dust settled the tax hike was defeated in all 11 counties. Despite Rick's best efforts (he actually had gone door to door with Mayor Murphy promoting the program) the initiative was completely repudiated. Not long after that I was summoned to Rick's office for an alleged reconciliation meeting, where I was lectured about how he really was a true conservative and that people like me should not be 'sore winners' and should line up in support of him again. I offered to work with him to find private ways of funding the stadium projects, but he did not accept that offer. Instead, he and his team worked behind the scenes to do what they said they would not do: Go ahead and use tax dollars to fund the stadiums anyway.

Not long after denying even the possibility of the existence of a Plan B, they unveiled one which was almost completely dependent on government funding. After a massive lobbying effort, they succeeded in getting the bills through the State Legislature. Rick dutifully provided federal tax support, most conspicuously including a half a billion dollars for a tunnel connecting downtown with the stadium complex despite the existence of four bridges nearby. Of course, it didn’t work, and a few years later the city of Pittsburgh entered the municipal equivalent of bankruptcy and Mayor Murphy retired in disgrace.

Rick never acknowledged the error of his oft-made guarantees that voting down the tax would mean the inevitable loss of the teams, nor of his broken promises to abide by the will of the people. Nor has he addressed the tension between his claims to be a Tea Party kind of a guy and his arrogant dismissal of anti-tax activists who opposed the massively funded campaign in David vs. Goliath fashion. Nor has he explained to the conservative base of his party how he supported a plan which involved numerous high-profile takings of private property under the guise of eminent domain for the purpose of private economic development projects.

The second big lie Santorum told was about where he lived. Santorum ran against Doug Walgren to represent the 18th Congressional District in 1990. The centerpiece of Rick's campaign was the issue of residency. Walgren lived near Washington, not in his home district. Santorum argued not only that Walgren himself had gotten 'out of touch' with the district, but that living away from the district one represents inherently made one out of touch. This point was made repeatedly in public speeches, debates, mailings and media interviews, including the ones that Rick did with me.

Abortion was not a big issue with Rick at that time. In fact, the first time I interviewed him, I tried to turn the conversation towards what I believed was pro-life common ground. He interrupted and said that wasn't what he was there to talk about and redirected the conversation back to his chosen themes. Rick had only recently become pro-life, and had only recently come back to the Catholic Church from which he had drifted away. This is not to say that Rick's views on faith and life issues are not genuine now, only that Rick goes through phases in which he is 'all in' with a particular message, then moves on to another one in which he is 'all in'; never acknowledging the shifts. Rick in 1990 was 'all in' on the residency issue.

That's why so many of us who had been Santorum supporters were shocked to learn that shortly after he became a U.S. Senator, he quietly moved to Northern Virginia, but covered his tracks by buying a very small house in Penn Hills (a Pittsburgh suburb, not far from where I live), next door to his in-laws. We learned this not from Santorum announcing it, but it sort of dribbled out through various reports. Ultimately it became a very big issue because Rick enrolled his children in a Pennsylvania-based cyber charter school while living in Virginia, but which billed Penn Hills for the tuition.

Rick had pledged to live in the community he represented. He broke that pledge, and hid the breaking of it by buying a small unfurnished house in his home district.

I was a talk show host at the time that the Santorum residency scandal occurred. I can tell you with confidence that the people of the region were overwhelmingly enraged, left, right and center. Rick appeared on my radio show as a guest in the midst of the scandal, and we spoke on and off air about it.

He claimed that he really wanted to live in Pennsylvania and would if he could, but that his responsibilities in the Senate, particularly after he had become Senate majority whip, made that impossible. Of course the problem with his explanation was that after the people of Pennsylvania removed from his back the burden of being Senate majority whip or of being Senate anything, he did not move back to the state that he said he wanted to live in, despite the fact that the law firm he worked for had a large Pittsburgh office.

Instead, he bought a 2 million dollar home in northern Virginia, quietly. According to the conservative newspaper, the Washington Examiner, he used an unusual form of purchase through a legal trust which did not have his name on it, and which is often used to keep real estate purchases secret. The desire to live in Pennsylvania: Another lie and another deceptive real estate purchase to hide the lie. Rick publicly bought a house he didn’t live in and secretly bought one he did live in.

When the purchase was revealed, Rick even lied about the value of the house, claiming that he, like many Americans, was 'under water', except that the The Washington Examiner did the math and found that his house value is higher than his mortgage, which means he is not under water.